A Bucha couple said they were hunted by Russian soldiers because they had relatives in the Ukrainian army

• A Bucha couple said Russian soldiers were searching for them because they have relatives in the Ukrainian army.
• Nearly 300 people were buried in mass graves in the Ukrainian town outside of the capital city of Kyiv.
• “They didn’t knock on the door, they immediately opened fire,” the woman said in a video interview, per an off-camera translator.

A couple in Bucha said they were targeted by Russian soldiers because they have relatives serving in the Ukrainian army, German tabloid BILD reported.

Nearly 300 people were buried in mass graves in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, about 52 kilometers (32 miles) from the capital city of Kyiv. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply shocked” by images of civilian killings in Bucha and joined the European Union in calling for an investigation into potential war crimes by Russian forces.

In spite of the shocking images and witness testimonies of the massacre in Bucha, Russia has denied wrongdoing and claimed that the killings were a Ukrainian hoax meant to frame its military.

Journalist Paul Ronzheimer, a reporter for BILD reporting on the crisis in Ukraine, interviewed Mykhola and Viktoria, who claim their home address was on a “list” used by Russian soldiers because of relatives in the army.

“I took off my address plate because some friends told me that they have some lists,” Mykhola said, per a tweet by Ronzheimer. “I don’t know where they got this lists from. They came six times for me. My nephew is in the UA army and the sister of my wife is doing her service. They came to arrest me six times.”

Ronzheimer tweeted that Russian soldiers talked to their neighbors and asked about the couple.

“We were hiding all the time we lived in the shed,” Mykhola said, per the journalist’s tweeted translation. “We didn’t show our nose outside for three weeks.”

—Paul Ronzheimer (@ronzheimer) April 7, 2022

The couple said they were hiding in the attic when Russian soldiers came to their home.

“They didn’t knock on the door, they immediately opened fire,” Viktoria said in a video interview, per an off-camera translator.

According to the translator, Viktoria said: “That was the most terrifying moment … when they were hiding here. They were hoping the Russians would not find them. And they were sitting here and they heard them crashing and smashing everything in the house. And then they heard the explosion from the grenade, and then one of the soldiers said to the other, ‘Nikolai, it’s clear here, let’s go.'”